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‘Unlike their urban brethren in, say, Chicago or Miami (who live above dry cleaning establishments in crummy neighborhoods and whose lungs would buckle if they had to breathe pure mountain air), Seattle gumshoes perch in aeries that look out on spectacular vistas.’

‘It was hired to get hold of the evidence that was needed to justify a judgment already made, like a seedy gumshoe.’

‘So the gumshoes tried to prove he was homosexual but were caught as they tried to follow him into Congress.’

‘As far back as 1992, the artist himself began scouring around like a gumshoe to assemble the many authentic, '40s-era objects included in Durant.’

‘The literary gumshoe had tackled and solved another hard case.’

‘Winston, who fancies himself a bit of a gumshoe, is determined to figure out which one of them wrote the note, and persuades Don to visit all of them, searching for clues in the process.’

‘Though the guzzling gumshoes of the 30's and 40's evolved from those eloquent pipe-smoking dandies, they have as much in common as rotgut rye and Earl Grey tea.’

‘Many of these gumshoes had shoulder holsters of the horizontal variety.’

‘Instead, they ended up as quasi-independent gumshoes who are picked by the president (and can be fired by him as well) and who report to Congress and the heads of their agencies.’

‘If little living things can thrive here in hot acid baths, perhaps the universe offers many more likely suspects for gumshoes working on the case of missing alien life.’

‘He was the new gumshoe - and Hollywood wasn't quite ready for him.’

‘He dreams one day of teaching others the secret wisdom of the gumshoe.’

Origin

Early 20th century: from gumshoes in the sense ‘sneakers’, suggesting stealth.